How to Crowdsource A Video Sales Playbook

Sales Enablement | 1 How to Crowdsource A Video Sales Playbook

Crowdsourcing is having an incredible impact on the world around us. From fundraising to product innovation and everything in between, is a great way to tap individuals who have a vested interest in a specific cause or product. Now, crowdsourcing is making its way into the business world, and nowhere is the potential greater than in sales enablement.

While crowdsourcing is making its mark on the business world, the humble sales playbook is ripe for a renaissance. Most playbooks today are lengthy, dense, and static, an offshoot of textbook teachings that go against the findings of brain science. Yet the most effective sales playbooks are dynamic, focused, and modular, presenting information in short bites and engaging sellers every step of the way.

Dynamic is the key: video has the potential to capture our attention and hold it far more so than print alone. This has been shown in countless studies over the past few decades, but only now has our technology advanced far enough to take advantage of the research.

By now it’s no secret: the next generation of playbooks calls for crowdsourcing. Sales reps have a vast amount of practical insight that we can leverage to increase revenue. Drawing from their experience, we can identify the best of the best to create video coaching modules that help everyone on our team up their game.

Applying crowdsourcing to video playbooks offers many potential benefits:

Execute work you might not be able to do on your own

Find solutions to problems that affect a broader set of reps

Get out of the box and tap into diverse thinking

Reduce expenses and save time

Our sales reps have a lot to teach us… if only we give them a platform and listen to what they have to say. Video playbooks empower sales reps by engaging them in the act of creation. One of the primary drivers of sales enablement is to give reps what they need, in a format that they can use. Crowdsourcing is the way, and video coaching can deliver high-quality results.

Sales Enablement | 2 Here are 6 steps to successful crowdsourcing for video playbooks:

1 Design the project and divide the labor.

Just like the best playbooks deliver focused information in short, bite-sized chunks, your video crowdsourcing project needs to be targeted for quick wins. Design the project for 1-2 months of work that your team can complete while maintaining their sales activities, and then work backwards to identify key milestones. Make sure your goals are clear and aligned with SMART deliverables: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, and Realistic, all with a clear Timeline.

Here’s an example project plan that taps into the expertise of all your sales reps:

Goal: Create a 5 stage playbook covering common sales dialog snippets and the tactics your reps need at each stage of the buying process. Format:

Video recordings from your reps, 1 - 5 minutes each

Approximately 20-25 modules total; 2-10 modules per stage

Validation/Proof - must receive minimum 4 out of 5 star rating from management

Delivery/Access Point - Veelo inside the CRM

Discovery Validation Business Purchase Decision Negotiate & Close Justification 30 Seconds: Win Story 2 How To Quantify References and Managing About Us Value Case Studies Discounts

30 Seconds: BANT Competitive Setting Up a Obtaining Value Proposition Conversation Battle Card 2 Close Plan Signatures

5 Common Competitive Competitive Objections Battle Card 1 Battle Card 3

Pitch Video Value Pitch to Target Win Story 3 Buyer Persona 1

Win Story 1 Value pitch to Target Buyer Persona 2

Qualification Questions

Sales Enablement | 3 Timeline - Approximately 1 month:

20 days to record and review for selection

10 days for approval and set up for access

If you spread the work across a team of 50 - 75 sellers, everyone only needs to submit one or two of their best recordings to generate the 20 - 25 videos you’ll need to create a new playbook. It’s obvious this project only requires a very small investment of time from each of your reps to deliver a potentially huge payoff when the playbook goes live.

Choose a platform to receive the crowdsourced video 2 submissions.

There are a handful of video training solutions designed specifically for sales teams, but if you want this project to succeed, select one that’s straightforward and easy to use. Your reps are busy, and if this new technology isn’t intutive they won’t use it. Fewer videos submissions means the quality of your playbooks will suffer.

Make sure it’s easy to export the videos to your sales enablement platform, or better yet, select a platform that integrates with your CRM. If there’s one thing that kills sales momentum, it’s asking your reps to spend an hour searching for the content they need. Keep reps on task by delivering the new video playbook directly within their workflow. If reps can’t find it, they won’t use it.

Sales Enablement | 4 3 Recruit the crowd.

Project success depends on a dedicated effort from team members across your organization. While the ultimate goal is to build a dynamic playbook that reps will use to achieve quota, we need to do more than just assign them a task and hope for the best. This is especially important if your current playbook is underutilized and outdated.

You’ll see much better results if you can demonstrate the value of video playbooks to your entire organization:

Engage executive sponsorship early on. Give them a say in the final product by asking for their help in reviewing some of the videos and the finished playbook.

Conduct short demos and a few practice runs, so both sellers and sales management can see how easy it is.

Work with sales management to garner enthusiasm and a commitment to collect at least one video from each of their reps.

Influence and champion the right people for the right videos.

A few examples:

Look to your sales veterans for videos that demonstrate closing tactics.

Call on subject matter experts to highlight product benefits.

Tap creatives who find innovative ways to revive deals that have stalled.

4 Write clear instructions and release the job.

Let’s face it: salespeople are busy and every day the pressure is on. The goal is to create a video playbook that will make them more efficient and successful, but to get there you need to introduce the project in the right way.

Sales Enablement | 5 Take these steps to encourage full participation:

Clearly communicate the benefit and time-frame for the project - keep it SMART

Give sellers clear instructions on how to record and upload their videos

Anticipate common challenges, and provide details on where to go for help

Follow up with sellers who don’t complete their videos within a week, and thank sellers that complete it on time

Here’s a sample email that you can template for your organization:

“Dear Sales Team,

We’re using Veelo to give you the tools you need to close more deals faster, but we need your help.

One element of our new playbooks will be videos of how to overcome common sales challenges. We’re asking for 1 - 2 of your best videos on this topic. It won’t take long; each video only needs to be 1 - 5 minutes and you can find clear instructions for this new assignment within Veelo.

For best results, we recommend recording and uploading videos while you’re on WiFi.

Over the next few weeks we’ll select the Top 20 videos to incorporate them into our new playbook. If you have any questions, please see your Sales Manager or Veelo Admin.

Thanks again for your help!”

Sales Enablement | 6 5 Listen to the crowd and manage the job.

Once you complete your new playbook and publish it for your team, be open to feedback. With a team of 50 - 75 reps you won’t be able to use everyone’s videos, but you can easily point out why the chosen videos work well, and give your team encouragement for the next round.

What happens when your reps receive a SMART outline detailing how they can achieve their goals? They’ll follow through, and in this case that means putting more time into practicing and perfecting sales techniques. In their quest to record the best videos of themselves, they’ll also be learning sales tactics that will help them improve on a much deeper level.

Some quick guidelines to keep in mind once the first version of your video playbook goes live

Validation/Proof - must receive minimum 4 out of 5 star rating from management.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good - you can always upgrade later.

Make it fun. Celebrate the humor and creativity of your team.

Ship it and test.

The more your team uses video, the more they’ll suggest new modules that will help them with sales challenges you might have missed the first time. As your reps close more and larger deals, make it easy for them to submit new videos that improve upon your existing content. As they become more familiar with the platform, eventually they’ll send videos voluntarily. This is the promise and potential of crowdsourcing, and video playbooks can make it a reality.

Sales Enablement | 7 6 Assemble the work of the crowd and create the final product.

Selecting the right sales enablement platform is key to this project’s success. This one choice alone not only determines how your team records and uploads videos, but also how you create the finished product and deliver learning modules within their workflow. Tools like Veelo not only give you an easy way to manage your growing library of video content, but they also provide intelligent search as well as predictive coaching aligned with your sales stages.

While recording and watching videos engages your sellers much more than text alone, relying exclusively on video goes too far in the opposite direction. Crowdsourced videos can be a key element of your new playbooks, but to maximize knowledge retention be sure to deliver content in a variety of ways, in a random order. Include knowledge checks and flashcards to test your sellers on the skills they’ll learn from watching their co-worker’s videos. You might even want to add short text blocks or brief audio clips after the videos, to reinforce what your sellers just watched.

No matter how you mix and match, remember that this type of interleaved practice will make it easier for your reps to apply these skills in their conversations with prospects. This is the type of training they need: a playbook based on brain science that includes crowdsourced videos from their peers. They’ll need it when as they drive opportunities through pipeline in real life, because after all, sales is as real as it gets.

Sales Enablement | 8 Summary

Sales reps are always looking ahead to a brighter future. “How can I make this deal close faster?” “What does my pipeline look like for the rest of this month? This quarter?” Yet while sellers set their sights on the horizon, they’re often held back by playbooks rooted in the past. This tension between your reps’ goals and static playbooks has met its match with video crowdsourcing.

Your reps are homegrown experts, and they can offer you essential insights into the right way to engage buyers. Once you decide to use crowdsourced videos as the building blocks for more effective playbooks, you’ll be helping your reps meet the challenges they face everyday.

Now, your reps can have the tools they need to make their future plans a reality.

About Veelo

Veelo is a single, easy-to-use sales enablement platform that helps improve onboarding, enablement and sales performance optimization. Built on brain science principles, powered by a alongside Veelo’s built-in tools, templates and integrations, Veelo ensures sellers are equipped with the content, coaching and productivity tools they need to win. Companies like Qorvo, Rubrik, , Vesta and others use Veelo to improve sales productivity and effectiveness.

Ready to learn more? Contact [email protected] or call 855.414.8760 today!

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